Cahamarca

Hello all,

I have been in Cahamarca for the last several days. Cahamarca is a northern department (equivalent of a state) with beautiful green mountains and lots of dairy products. The city that I am currently in is named Contumaza, and is beautiful. There will be a business volunteer spot opening up here, and I would not mind at all ending up in this town for my two years. I have been expressing a strong interest in agriculture though, which is pretty atypical of my fellow volunteers. I may end up down south then, but either way I feel that I have a pretty good chance of being in the mountains instead of the coast, which would make me very happy.
Anyway, we have been teaching a business workshop to community college students here and today I have free time because the students are out in the town selling a wide variety of mostly food products. This is because the workshop was built around them starting a small business at the end of the week, obtaining a small loan, paying it back the next day and reaping the profits. So far every group (my class has four, and the other two have a combined 8 I believe) seems to be doing very well. They do not need to pay their loan back until 3pm, but already many of the groups have sold out of their stock or met their breakeven points (the point after which whatever you get is pure profit).
As for the town, it has 9,000 inhabitants but feels like barely a thousand, a beautiful plaza with a huge conifer in the middle of it, a mirador (lookout point) complete with a live captured puma, and beautiful winding streets overlooked by balconies and older folks in ponchos and oversized local hats waving as you pass. The day before coming here I was in the capital of Cahamarca City for a little more than an hour which was beautiful. I ate lunch at a local restaurant and had fried cuy (guinea pig). The way they usually do it is skin it and throw it in the fryer, head, feet, and all. That was a bit unappetizing right off the bat, and you had to basically tear what little meat there was off the bone. It had a vaguely seafood taste, and I was not terribly excited about it all told. If I do end up in as rural a community as I am hoping for, I will probably be eating a lot of it though, so I had better get used to it. I will survive I am sure. On the brighter side, the ice cream I had afterwards was some of the freshest and tastiest I have ever had.
Well, I had better sign off. Tomorrow I am going to Trujillo, one of the most beautiful and historic cities in Peru. Given time and some sun I will probably see some of the most extensive pre-Incan ruins in the country and hit up the beach. I will let you all know how that went later…